Riding The Rails Essay

Art Imitates Life

Throughout history and all around the world, the popular music of any epoch has always reflected the social climates of the time. Music can be seen as a pure and undoctored documentation of the social, political, and cultural shifts or events happening at any given time. The music of the time can be seen as a history book that has been written by those who have lived during a certain age of cultural shifting which makes it a primary source for the attitudes of the general public in times of change. The music of an age must reflect the climate of that age in an honest way because, otherwise, the music would not be purchased by those living through these times of massive change. Throughout history music has reflected the ideals

of the era in which it was created, and, because of this, music is the perfect tool to explore the political, social, and cultural climates of some of the most important stages of American History.
To begin, the 1920s were a time in which the culture surrounding women and sex in general changed drastically from what it had been previously. Until then, the attitude was that women were angelically pure in every way and were responsible for taking care of the home. This attitude can be seen in Fredrick Lewis Allen’s book Only Yesterday in which it is stated, regarding the attitude towards women and sex before the 1920s, “women were the guardians of morality; they were made of finer stuff than men and were expected to act accordingly.” Women were expected to be the holders of high morals who married young and would not allow a man to kiss them until they knew it was the right man. However, this shifted to almost a complete inverse around the start of the 1920s. There began a looseness in allowing men and women to interact that began through the assumption that the rules that had been established regarding women’s purity would be followed. This led to a swift breakdown of that system that resulted in younger women becoming more promiscuous and open about taking part in their desires. Allen describes this attitude through stating that

“in July, 1920, a fashion-writer reported in the New York Times that "the American woman . . . has lifted her skirts far beyond any modest limitation," which was another way of saying that the hem was now all of nine inches above the ground. It was freely predicted that skirts would come down again in the winter of 1920-21, but instead they climbed a few scandalous inches farther.”

This sentiment very clearly shows the new ideas regarding flirtation that have begun to emerge in the 1920s. This massive shift towards women’s promiscuity can also be seen in the song Empty Bed Blues written by J.C. Johnson and performed most notably by Bessie Smith. In the song, Smith very clearly describes a one night stand “My new man had left me, just a room and empty bed.” This very clearly shows that Smith not only had sex with someone before marriage, but that the concept of waiting for “Mr. Right” was long gone. Smith later goes into somewhat graphic detail regarding the encounter through heavy innuendo saying “He’s a deep sea diver with a stroke that can’t go wrong.” This line alone destroys any notion that women are still pure, angelic, and untouched by human desire.
The 1920s also showed a time of awakening in terms of sexual orientation that had not before been seen in pop culture. Many people began expressing their sexuality in many ways through same sex coupling, androgyny, and much more. A number of cultural icons both outwardly and subtly expressed their homosexual tendencies and the shift of attitude towards alternate sexualities through their music. Ma Rainey teasingly expresses these lesbian tendencies in her song Prove It On Me she states that she “went out last night with a crowd of my friends,
they must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men.”This is fairly obviously alluding to lesbian tendencies which were not uncommon during this more pseudo-sexually-liberated time in American history. However, Ma Rainey does not state outright that she is a lesbian, but instead puts the burden of proof on those who would take issue with it through saying “they say I do it, ain't nobody caught me, sure got to prove it on me.” This statement essentially makes it obvious that there are rumors floating about which are coyly confirmed in her “don’t like no men” statement, however these rumors have not been proven by those spreading them. The 1920s was a time of complete shift in rules regarding sex and womanhood and this shift is clearly illustrated in the music of the time.
The end of the 1920s marked a massive shift in American prosperity and brought upon the United States what is now known as The Great Depression. This depression originated in the United States with a massive crash of the stock market in 1929, and, later that year, the Global stock market crashed accordingly. People were being laid off left and right and things called Hoovervilles emerged, these Hoovervilles were improvised areas of housing in the form of a small town created by those unemployed as a result of the Great Depression. People moved to creating their own forms of prosperity through doing odd jobs during this time in American History. In Studs Terkel’s book Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, Ed Paulson describes these troubles saying “I’d get up at five in the morning and head for the waterfront. Outside the Spreckles Sugar Refinery, outside the gates, there would be a thousand men. You know dang well there’s only three or four jobs.” People in this time period would move around searching for labor wherever they could find it, however they often were unable to beat the competition.
This search for work lead to the popular pursuit of hopping freight trains as seen in the film Riding the Rails.

During this period in American History, teenagers would often jump on slow moving or stopped trains in pursuit of fast transport to places where they could potentially make money to send home to their families. In Riding the Rails, people described the excitement of hopping these trains, and the freedom it brung; they had an almost wistful memory of the experience. In fact, one of those interviewed in the film is seen throughout the film currently hopping freight trains in his old age because he misses that freedom. In Hard Times this riding of the rails is described by Louis Banks when it is stated that he “would lay on the side of the tracks and wait until I could see the train comin’...I would ride all day and all night long in the hot sun.” People would quite literally hop a train just to find themselves work and food. The appeal of this freedom is clearly seen in the lyrics to the song Tumbling Tumbleweeds by the Sons of the Pioneers where they say “Lonely, but free, I'll be found, drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.” Although this life of hoboing and riding rails was dangerous, difficult, and painful, it was a level of freedom that had not been experienced before this depression and has not been experienced

since.
We also see a massive political movement in the 1930s after many turn to hate the Republican president at the time of the depression, Herbert Hoover. Hoover and the Depression made a massive impact on the influence of the Republican party as a whole and it showed through the American enthusiasm and encouragement of his Democratic successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. People were decidedly unhappy with Hoover because of this Depression and his failed efforts to rectify the Depression as described in Only Yesterday in the statement, “The Coue formula was failing; for the economic disease was more than a temporary case of nervous prostration, it was organic and deep- seated.” Despite Hoover’s best efforts to remedy the situation in the United States, people felt there needed to be a change. Musicians experienced a boost in creativity during the depression that Yip Harburg describes in Hard Times saying, “Someone who lost money found that his life was gone. When I lost my possessions, I found my creativity.” This increase in musicians creativity also leads to an increase in political music geared towards creating a shift in the system that could hopefully combat the Depression.
People no longer wanted an administration that brought about such immense hardship and these sentiments were vocalized in the song Breadline Blues by Slim Smith where he states Nineteen thirty-two won't be long, and when you place your vote please don't vote wrong, vote away those blues, those breadline blues.” This song makes a clear statement that the American people must rid themselves of the party who brought about this great depression through bringing in the Democratic candidate of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The American people found themselves finished with the politics that spawned the depression and now must push themselves out of it completely.
There was yet another massive shift around a decade after this Depression where we were met with conformity, suspicion,and McCarthy. This decade was the 1950s. Joseph McCarthy was a Wisconsin senator who essentially defined the 1950s through his mass accusations of Communism to those in all fields of work. McCarthy created the idea that Communism was the antithesis of all things American and implanted the idea in American people and politics that Communists were the ultimate enemy of freedom. Communist distrust reached so far as to create breaches in Constitutional Liberties on the part of the federal government. In his book The Sixties, Terry Anderson describes the extent of the overreach by the government to dismantle the threat Communism when it is said that “the president signed an act that ended ‘all rights and privileges’ for the Communist party, and his new Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, advocated a more aggressive foreign policy.” This ultimate fear of Communism and, arguably, the fear of being labeled as a Communist lead to an era of massive conformity.
This era in American History was also that of the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union. Unsurprisingly, it is also the decade in which Joseph Mccarthy created a mass hysteria in terms of the fear of Communism running rampant in the United States. This cold war prompted a fear of imminent Nuclear war with Russia, which would essentially prompt the end of the world as it was known. The American people are absolutely terrified by this fear of nuclear war, leading to further feeling of general fear and a need to conform in the minds of the American people. Bill Haley describes, in a fairly satirical way, these fears of the American people regarding the threat of a Nuclear war emerging from this Cold War when in his song Thirteen Women (And Only One Man in Town). In the song he says “Last night I was dreaming, dreamed about the H-bomb, well the bomb went off and I was caught, I was the only man on the ground.” Bill Haley is satirically describing the fear that is felt by the American people throughout this age of Cold War. People would have nightmares in which the third world war would start with Russia dropping an Atomic bomb. The American people found these nightmares to be a daytime fear because of the very real possibility that a Nuclear war would start up at any second. Bill Haley, in his song, both comforts the American people through his use of satire, while tapping into very real fears that were felt throughout the United States.
All in all, the music that has been popular with the American people throughout history has inevitably reflected the social, political, and cultural attitudes of the time.

During an age of sexual liberty and massive change in regards to women’s role in culture, the music heard by the people of the United States reflected ideas of loose women and morals. The 1920s also showed a time in which alternate sexualities were being almost openly embraced. This lead to a music that, somewhat subtly, described the emergence of non-hetero sexualities in conjunction with the rise in women’s rights. In the 1930s, the United States felt a time of economic draught which prompted a migration of workers who moved around through riding trains to find odd jobs. The music of this time demonstrated, very clearly, the sense of freedom associated with this age while maintaining the economic suffering. The 1930s and it’s music also demonstrated political ideals rooted in replacing the Republican president of the time with his Democratic successor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The 1950s moved away from the freedom of past decades and into a massive age of fear and anxiety regarding Communism and the Cold War. Songs of this decade reflected the fear in the hearts of the American people while providing a comforting satire. Music is the ultimate first hand source as it is undoctored by the hands of time or by the hands of those attempting to manipulate the past. Music was created in the time it was

written, to reflect the time in which it was written, and because of this it will always accurately illustrate the attitudes of it’s time. Music is ideal primary source, and throughout history it has provided commentary on the climate of the epoch.